[ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-15: IPv4 Allocation Policy for the Africa Portion of the ARIN Region

[Bill Woodcock]

      On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Owen DeLong wrote:
    > For that price per month, terrestrial microwave would pay for itself
    > rather quickly.  Have you considered setting up terrestrial microwave
    > links between providers?

Owen, don't be obnoxious.  Don't you think they'd love to?  But they go
to jail for that, remember?

This is getting way off-topic.

    > The playing field is level.  The resources available to the two teams before
    > they get to the field are vastly different.  On one side of the field,
    > you have a collection of well-funded rich kids from North America.  On the
    > other side, you have a collection of poor ISPs trying to help an even
    > poorer customer base.  The disparity between the economics of the two
    > teams does not mean the field is not level.  It does mean that there
    > are many other factors that come into whether it is a fair contest or not.

Correct.

    > However, making exceptions to the rules of the game to make the contest
    > more fair for a subset of the disadvantaged teams is not the right
    > answer.

Right, the correct answer is for Africans to have salary and
quality-of-life parity with Americans.  However I don't think you can
solve that in the context of ARIN policies.  But we can allow Africans to
solve their own problem in the context of ARIN policy, which is where
they have to do it, for now.


                                -Bill